Episode 32: Special Education is not a Place, It Is a Service, Part 2

Today, I welcome you back for part two of my conversation with Christopher Conklin On this episode, Chris tells us how he defines inclusive education and shares why he is not a fan of the pull-out resource room model for special education.

Transcript

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE, where we talk about inclusive education and why it works and how to make it happen.

Today, I welcome you back for part two of my conversation with Christopher Conklin On this episode, Chris tells us how he defines inclusive education and shares why he is not a fan of the pull-out resource room model for special education.

Arthur: You mentioned the resource center pull-out model and how you are not really a fan of that for special ed delivery. Can you explain a little bit why that is? And what do you prefer to go in its place?

Chris: So I think it was an evolution for me, even though as Fred said, I'm only 35, so I’m only a few years in for me. I started my career in Jersey City and I saw a lot of kids being placed in congregated settings, and the mantra was the students will go to these settings, get the intense intervention instruction that they need to then transition back into the mainstream.

The idea is that resource room is a short-term placement to provide intense direct instruction to students to close that gap very quickly and then transition them back into the general ed setting.

Okay, great idea. Love it. Let's see what happens. So then Bridgewater okay, all these resource rooms, you students are indeed resource rooms. Great. How are they doing? Oh, let's take a look. So one summer I actually worked over the summer and did a bunch of testing from elementary school to high school. I actually did 40 assessments over the summer, believe it or not, they paid us per assessment.

So I squeezed in as many as I could. The young guy just married. I wanted to make sure I had money for my family, so I was testing away. And what I noticed was there's a bunch of high school students that I was testing that were in special education for nine years, ten years, 11 years, some of them 12 years.

Chris: And their academic support was mostly resource room. And they were probably reading on a third or fourth grade level and doing math on a third, third or fourth grade level in high school. So I'm like, that's interesting. Why did they come into special ed? Let me see their eligibility status. Oh, third grade. Fourth grade, Second grade. So they made zero progress based on the results of my assessments.

We provided them with nine, ten, 12 years of resource room intervention and no progress.

Okay, So that was in my mind. I'm not really thinking anything of it. I'm a third year. LDTC, who am I to say anything? So as I go through my career, one of the things that I did was as I transitioned from a learning consultant to administration, I would do a sample, let me pull these kids and look at their assessments from third grade to 12th grade.

Boom, boom. I'm doing this over and over again. What do I see? Minimal or no progress from when they came into special education to when they exited. So now we're providing this targeted, specific intervention over a decade to make sure these kids close that gap. And what's happening to that gap is getting wider and wider and wider.

Chris: So obviously the idea of the program is awesome. The actual implementation, not so much. So if we're going to make minimal progress, let's pretend it's all equal that the students are only going to make the progress that they possibly can make based on who they are and what their deficits are in learning, then at least if we don't pull them out, they get to be with their peers. They get to experience what their peers experience for their academic career.

So even if they make no progress, which in evidence they have made no progress in everything I've seen, even though it's antidotal it's still there. Then I would much rather provide them the academic support in the jet setting, then to continue segregating them from their peers.

So then what happens? So then I go to Hackettstown and we start doing that. And what do we start seeing? Believe it or not, students are starting to pass the state tests. They've never passed them before. Oh, isn't that amazing? What an accomplishment.

So those students who would have been segregated in resource from before got the Miller Lite effect, the same great taste, less filling in many resource rooms is what they get. That was my catchphrase. You don't you don't have to quote anybody on that. But that's what I always think of is, same great things, but it's less filling. What's the point of that? So I would much rather put them in a classroom where there's two teachers, a janitor teacher and a special education teacher for that for the day.

Make sure they get that special education delivered to them where they are. They don't have to go someplace to get it. It's not a magic dust that the teacher has on their desk. They get the special ed services in there at the same time, getting exposed to the same content, the same pacing, the same curriculum that they would if they were in the resource room with their peers.

And they get to experience a whole new set of students that they wouldn't have typically got to experience. Because in most cases, especially in small school districts, maybe not places like Edison, but places like Caldwell or places like Hackettstown or places like Haledon, students would be in the same resource rooms together for their entire academic career. So imagine if you were eligible for special ed and you got resource room in first grade, and so was your friend.

So the two of you went to Resource Room in first grade? In second grade. In third grade. In fourth grade. In fifth grade. All the way to you graduated high school. So you never once set foot in English class or a math class with anybody but that student. So you have your example was that student. So wouldn't it be great if you had other examples of academic skills, academic knowledge, conversation, language?

Chris: So again, that's why I'm not a fan of resource room. I was a fan and now I am no longer a fan because the actual idea is great. The implementation not so much. So I think I could deliver that same service, that same support in a gen-ed classroom. The question I always ask when you get to that barrier is, tell me the thing that you can't do in class that you do in resource room?

If anyone could tell me that instructional strategy, that tool that you can use in a resource room that you can't replicate in a gen-ed classroom, then I'll agree to say, okay, resource room should come back. Small group, you could do it, with individualized instruction, you could do it, direct instruction, you could do it, specialized instruction. You could do it.

So what's the difference where? And again, special education isn't a place, it's a service. And I think that got mixed up when we started pulling these kids out, making these promises that we will shrink the gap, and the gap just gets larger and larger and larger. So I would much rather do it the other way.

Chris: A perfect example of this is students take the graduation proficiency assessment.

One student out of 35 students passes it in English. One student all resource room. So after ten years of in-class resource, if only one student passes, we are doing just as good as if we had resource room. So why don't we try something different? And if it doesn't work, then that means zero kids pass. And I don't think the odds on that are great.

I think we're going to see in my experience, we'll see a definite improvement in students academic support services that they receive to make sure that their academic achievement is aligned with that support. So that's why I don't like resource room, and that's why I think in-class resource is a much better model support than 90% of the students that receive special education.

Fred: So that was a fantastic articulation of the argument for inclusive education for students. It’s very, very close to what we would present in, say, an inclusion 101 presentation. And that's going back to both the law and the data, which really clearly identified that separate settings really don’t, there's no there's no magic in there. You don't magically go to the segregated setting, get cured. You are relegated to a small class with five kids or eight kids that you're going to spend your entire K-12 educational career with.

And really, that's not preparing students for life in a post-secondary school. It's not preparing them to interact with our somewhat typical adult population. It's really stunting their social-emotional growth and the educational benefit is really there for them as well.

You do make some clear delineations between resource and self-contained, and I'm curious about that because everything that you said for pull-out resource classrooms in the research holds true for self-contained classrooms. Now, public schools across this country are at different levels when it comes to inclusive education. A place like Berkeley Heights in New Jersey is including 90% of their kids, 80% of the day or more.

Fred: Where are you in West Caldwell ? What is the the challenge with getting more kids out of self-contained classrooms as well?

Chris: I think the biggest part of the self-contained challenge is what is that magic number for students that they can be successful in that setting without interfering in everyone else's learning? So I think that individuality, that's what's so important about those IEP meetings and having that data drive those decisions.

Because you have students that are in learning language disability classes that probably can spend 90% of their day in a gen-ed setting and they may need support. So they're not really what we would call L.D. students. They're really mainstream students who need some other supports. So what are we doing to eliminate that barrier in the school that is causing us to have to make a decision to put that student in a segregated setting? It's not about what does the student have to do? What do we have to do as a school to eliminate that barrier?

And I think that's a mindset change and it doesn't happen overnight, and that's a change. So once you start taking those barriers from resource room down, you start having that question, people start bringing that to you. One of the most exciting things for me was when I was in Edison and we were going into the third year of this change from resource, from the in-class resource.

And one of the middle school principals said, Can I just get rid of all the resource rooms now? Do I have to wait? And I said, No, we don't have to wait at all. If you're ready, we could do it. Right now. We just have to make sure that the parents are okay with the changes in the IEP.

And I don't see that being a barrier because most of them are already transitioned to that. But we could do it now. I'm happy to do that and I'm sure that the IEP teams will be happy to meet to have those conversations with those parents and make those changes now. And hopefully we won't have any dissenters and we could kind of transition right to that.

Chris: But that was exciting for me because they saw the positives in it and then you start seeing that conversation change about students who are in multiple disabled classes or students or an autistic class is like how much time can they spend in a janitor setting and still be successful and whatever other support services they need.

How do we deliver the ABA methodology in a gen-ed setting that is successful for the student to make progress and not disruptive for everyone else's learning?

Those are the questions that I think are the challenges and those are the barriers that you have to start trying to take down. And some of that is training and some of that additional staffing.

But all of that is a little bit longer process than I think the transition from resource room to in-class resource. But once you start laying the groundwork, then that opens up the conversations and has an opportunity for the IEP team members, especially the people who are leading it, the child study team to say, does that student really need a 1 to 1?

If they don't, then why is that student excluded from this activity? Why is this so? The mindset changes the language that you huge changes. It's like instead of saying that students should be included. The question is why are they excluded? And if they are excluded, how do we eliminate the barrier that's creating that exclusion as opposed to we should include them more?

Chris: Well, everyone likes that and that's great idea. But the other question is much more important Why are they excluded? And if we could say, Oh, I see why they're excluded because of this. Well, what service and support can we put in place to eliminate that barrier that's excluding them from going to a morning meeting with the kindergarten class or participating in the lab in physics because they obviously they have the academic skills, but the behavioral barriers are getting in the way.

What do we what supports do we need to provide that student in order for them to be successful there, that they aren't receiving that same support? Without it, they can't be successful. Okay, That's the question for the IEP team. I think that's where that 10% because usually is about 10% of the population, you really have to have a conversation about how I hope I answer that.

Fred: Oh you did. You did. And you've been through this now a couple of times in a couple of different districts where you're making large-scale systemic change to go into a typical New Jersey public school district and take it from wherever you find it to your kind of goal spot how many years? I think that many administrators try to sometimes move too fast or move too slow.

What's your experience? What is how long does it take to get from point A to the goal in that situation?

Chris: I think it's probably a 3 to 5 year investment in professional development time and training. Sometimes it happens quicker because everyone buys in immediately and sometimes it happens slower because there's outside barriers to it. When you're a director of special services and you don't get to be the superintendent, you have to make sure that your superintendent is on board with what you're doing.

So luckily for me, in my experience in Hackettstown, I had several superintendents that were gung ho about making sure students were included. When I was hired in Edison by Dr. Richard O'Malley, who's now in South Carolina, he basically said, Here's the keys to the kingdom Special education at that point was in and I don't want to say dire straits, but it wasn't what it needed to be.

I'll put it in a positive light. There was a lot of room for improvement. So he said, Here's the keys to the kingdom. Please do what you can to make the experience for our special needs population better than it has been over the past decade. And I said, Absolutely.

And I said, Is there anything specific you want me to address? He goes, Anything and everything you think needs to happen to make this a better situation for those students, Please do it.

Chris: So I jumped in feet first and we started making those changes. We started moving away from resources, from bringing in class resources. We started providing specialized training for the Gen end for the special education teachers. We created a robust intervention and referral services program there, and then we started creating very specific, I want to say, activities and support for the teachers that were in the specialized classrooms to make sure that they all had a framework for what they were doing in the classrooms to help them transition students that weren't appropriately placed in those classrooms and move those students back into the mainstream setting.

So in my time in Edison, we also had enrollment boom. We went from 15,000 students. By the time I left, we were over 17,000 students we had when I first got there, I want to say maybe a dozen self-contained programs that were supporting students on the autism spectrum through the ABA methodology that they were using.

And by the time I left, there was over almost 40 classrooms from kindergarten through 12th grade. We had no secondary program, we had no transition program. We opened a shoprite in one of the buildings to make sure we had a shop right. We opened the Farmstand in the other building. We expanded our both to be disabled classes from preschool all the way through 12th grade.

We expanded that learning language disabilities class from kindergarten through 12th grade. So there was a lot of moving parts going on in the school district.

Chris: We went from well over 240 out of district students. By the time I left, we were in the one sixties, so we either transitioned back or when students exited, other students didn't go out to out-of-district placements.

So we kept those students maybe not necessarily in the mainstream question as much about it, but at least in their home school district, they didn't go to outside placements, so there was a lot of moving parts. So hopefully we left it better and then when I came to Caldwell, one of the first things we did, we started transitioning away from the pull out resource model and resource room model where the students are excluded from learning with their peers and especially the elementary schools that are bringing them back.

So we're slowly seeing that transition impact the middle school this year where once the students exit fifth grade, there's no reason to step them back and put them in resource room. They were successful in class resource. Why wouldn't that same model follow them? So you see that slow transition as students transition up, they start going in-class resource and we make sure we layer those supports and services in there.

Chris: So we're going into year, I want to say probably year three, maybe year two, depending on how you look at it. It's my year three. Because of the pandemic. It was a weird year. So it's probably like this will be at the end of this year, but year three. So by the end of the fifth year, we hope to see the model fully embraced across K to 12.

Fred: So you've had a variety of professional experiences leading up to this point. I'm actually curious about your educational background, two graduate degrees plus the doctorate. When you look at the work you've been doing along the way, in the work you're doing now, what educational experience was proven to be most beneficial for making change happen and what program did you learn that?

Chris: Well, I think I don't know if I learned that in the program, to be honest with you. I think my academic career really just helps establish my credentials. Well, if there's any specific one experience that I would say did that for me, I do think that the learning disability teacher consultant classes probably played a large role in my philosophy, and I think the professors who you have and what they teach you and how they teach you really plays a role in that.

I had a professor who instilled in me this idea that once you make a student eligible for special ed, you change that student's life forever. Good or bad, their life is changed forever. Those are her words, not mine. And I think about that all the time. So that really drives my thinking about once we make these decisions for these students if they're eligible for special ed and we start excluding them from their peers, we're changing their life forever.

And I just don't know if that's a positive thing for them. So I really take that to heart. And I when I go into these conversations about change, systemic change, I try to keep that thought in the back of my mind If I'm going to change this child's life forever, this family's life forever, and ask them to trust me, I got to have faith that what I'm asking them to trust me with is going to be successful, and my experience with the resource room is just not that.

Chris: I think that being educated with your peers is much more effective than not being educated your peers to the maximum extent possible. And again, some students can't be there the whole day, but it doesn't mean they can't be there part of the day. And ultimately, as you were saying before, there's no resource rooms in life, so if students are graduating and they're not prepared to go on to college, start a career, then we did something wrong, and we need to look back and really decide what we need to change to make sure that that child that is now an adult can be successful in whatever path they've chosen.

Arthur: So this conversation has been really great. One question I unintentionally skipped over that I would like to ask you now is how how would you define inclusive education?

Chris: I would really think that it's about addressing all students learning needs, the diversity of their learning needs. If they need special education services, if they're multi-language learners, whatever their needs are, we should be able to address those needs in a general education setting to the maximum extent possible.

And again, not every student can be in there for the full day. I understand and respect that as someone who has a lot of experience in special education, there are instances where students need specialized instruction that necessarily can't be delivered in that mainstream setting, but we need to reduce or eliminate any barriers that stop them from being in there to the maximum extent possible.

So to me, that's inclusion. Giving students what they need to be successful in the general education setting to the maximum extent possible, regardless of their individual needs. And that obviously that's layered and, diversity and equity and making sure everyone gets what they need.

Chris: Collaboration with the teachers, the parent, the child study team members and everyone involved in administration providing individualized supports, making sure the environment is accessible to the environment in school is accessible. The environment after school is accessible so they can participate in these clubs before and after school and sports and all those other specific things that actually create a school community.

Because it's not only from 8:00 to 3:00, it's from when students are able to get into school and when they can exit school and all those other things. That makes that plays a big role in students experience at school and then always professional development for staff.

You know, we are lifelong learners and I learn something new all the time. So it's really important that teachers embrace the idea that change doesn't happen accidentally. It happens when you're committed and you're trained to make those changes. And that's kind of what we always try to strive to do, to give the teachers all the tools, skills and knowledge they need to make this kind of thing happen.

Because inclusive education is not easy. It takes a lot of work and a lot of collaboration from everybody. So and again, I'm lucky to be here in the Caldwell-West Caldwell public schools, where they genuinely believe in that. Our strategic plan is designed around that. Most of our strategic goals are touching this idea of inclusivity and equity.

Even when you see our mission statement, it really says to foster, inspire and champion learning for all. That is just not words on paper. It's something that everyone involved in developing our mission statement believed in. You see it in the academic excellence and growth mindset that we have in the schools and the wellness and balance activities that we create in our comprehensive equity plan that we just adopted.

Chris: And then also all of our smart goals around teaching and learning around student wellness, around equity and inclusion, around family engagement and technical are all really a big part of what goes on with the community equity and inclusion vision that we have for the school district. So I'm happy to be the superintendent here and I always am glad when I hear from community members about all the positive things that they see going on in the school.

Arthur: Chris, thank you for this great conversation and learning about all of the great things you all are doing there in the Caldwell-West Caldwell schools is really impressive and encouraging to see that you and your colleagues, the team that you have there, working toward inclusion. And thank you for sharing your story and your experience with us on this episode of the podcast.

Chris: Thank you very much, Fred. Take care of yourself. Nice to see you again.

Arthur: Thanks everybody. Fred, thank you for joining us and adding to this great conversation. And everybody, have a good day.

We thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast. This podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE.

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